Millennial Media faces patent lawsuit

Millennial Media was hit with a federal lawsuit in Delaware on Thursday by a competitor claiming that the Baltimore mobile advertising company infringed on three of its patents.

The lawsuit came a week after Millennial went public, raising $152 million in what was widely considered a successful offering in the technology sector.

New York City-based Augme Technologies Inc. is suing Millennial based on its holding of patents pertaining to the "providing of targeted content over the Internet." Augme says its technology allows it to customize ad delivery "based on the end user’s computing environment, connectivity, bandwidth level, geographic location, gender, age, or other targeting criteria such as behavioral marketing data."

In addition to serving ads on mobile web pages, Millennial also serves ads to native applications on smartphones. The lawsuit doesn't appear to address that aspect of Millennial's technology.

Augme is seeking unspecified financial damages from Millennial.

Augme was founded in 1999. Millennial was founded in 2006.

I could not find any patents belong to Millennial Media in the U.S. patent database, but that doesn't mean there might not be any sneaking around in there. I'll keep looking. I also have a message in to Millennial Media for comment.